About Digital U

Digital U is an online exhibition space for artists working in digital media, including film, animation, video and sound. It’s a platform that selected artists take control of to exhibit their work: either presenting single artworks or a series.

Digital U is inspired by our long-established U-Hang Exhibition Programme, in which, with a spirit of curiosity, artists place artworks into surprising places within our building. In both opportunities we encourage an experimental, test-bed, research-led approach.

Digital U: Digital Gene Pool

Curator for the physical U Hang Exhibition Programme (2014-17), Ruth Pringle curated the first season of Digital U exhibitions, under the title Digital U: Digital Gene Pool, running 2017/2018.

The series began by presenting the CGI work Augmented Reality, by David Theobald (2017), followed by the compelling audio sculptures Music for Hacked Geiger Counters, by Ant Dickinson (2017).

In early 2018 we simulated Ciara Chapman’sMy Chronic Pain Diary blog – inviting blogger and artist Ciara to open her practice to us by including within the framework of the exhibition the processes behind her weekly work. This included several live Facebook conversations between her and Ruth and the public – discussing creative ideas, artistic practice, ways of using art to combat mental and physical health problems – and of course, how to maintain a creative practice when affected by severe health problems. The conversations were inspiring – and still available as a transcript on her page.

Alejandro Ball and Juan Crespo as Post-Internet Landscapes (PILproject) ended the first season with an invasion of our own website. Initially proposing to infest the Art Gene site with pop-up windows, their final exhibition The One – The Many, inserted portals-links across our site, which combined both internet meme culture with delightfully specific references to both Barrow-in-Furness and Art Gene.

“Curating the exhibition, The One – The Many, was a particular pleasure: There was such interesting tension between what we could possibly allow to happen (regarding internet safety, privacy and protecting our audience) – with the artistic expression being proposed – which of course encapsulates everything we stand for.

You can’t invite proposals for innovative Digital Art and then say, oh, no, we don’t know how to do that.

It took weeks of back and forth between artists, Directors and myself the curator to arrive at a show which results were as pure in its intent”.

Ruth Pringle, 2018

Digital U: Extreme Views

There was an unexpected twist to the process. By working closely with us on The One – The Many, Alejandro Ball became our choice for Guest Curator on the subsequent Digital U programme Digital U : Extreme Views (beginning Summer, 2018).

Alejandro began by selecting Benjamin Grosser’s, Textbook – a browser plugin that reshapes the Facebook social media platform into a sculptural experience for a user. Textbook – an outstanding exhibition in its own right – also forms a kind of bridge between the previous season and next season as both curators were involved. We also included a public Facebook interview between artist and curators as part of the event.

Digital U: Extreme Views will look at the radical nature of the artistic medium in the digital space, with each exhibition encounter highlighting a different aspect of our culture’s relation to the Internet.

An important aspect for the unfolding programme will be to communicate to audiences the diverse sets of artistic activities and practices taking place on the web, and the issues highlighted by these artists’ actions.

“As a personal rule in my practice I try and only work with the new, meaning creating collaborations with artists and other creatives to produce new works of art, and or, expand on progressive research projects already part of the artist’s practice”.

Alejandro Ball, 2018

Digital U: Extreme Views is an online digital exhibition series running in tandem with Art Gene’s vast Extreme Views public outreach coastal project, in which Art Gene work in partnership with the Islands and Bays of Barrow Coastal Team to link the landscapes with the communities of Barrow and Furness. Find out more here.

*Alejandro Ball, 2018

Image below: Washington-Moscow, by PILproject,
as part of their exhibition proposal for The One – The Many, 2018

Who can Apply?

Artists and creatives that use the online as a medium; this includes Performance, Software and Coding and Conceptual Art – in addition to Media Artworks such as video.

Works that have a central focus on social acceleration are very much encouraged.

Proposals with additional themes relating to our own research remit –re-visioning the social, natural and built environment are encouraged.